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11 October 2007 - RWE Npower is to build the first carbon-capturing plant at a coal-fired power station in the UK.
The company will build the plant at Aberthaw power station in Wales, and plans to begin operations in 2010. Npower said it would build a small 1MW megawatt plant initially, for about £8.4m ($17m), with further investment planned for a capture and storage demonstrator plant of at least 25 MW.
Both plants will be designed using post-combustion technology, so it can be applied to existing coal power plants. The larger capture and storage demonstrator plant would form part of one of Npower's new, high-efficiency, super-critical power stations.
Andy Duff, chief executive of Npower, said: "Over the next decade, older coal and nuclear power stations will close.
"However, coal continues to be an important source of energy for the UK and whilst this is the case we believe CO2 capture and storage (CCS) offers significant potential for reducing CO2 emissions. Our challenge is to ensure that we fully understand this potential and are best placed to make an investment in CCS that will support our energy strategy long term."
Earlier this year London set out plans to provide subsidies for one or two such plants in the UK, thus starting a race between power companies to be the first to build a plant.The government will launch the competition for a carbon capture and storage plant in November, and on Tuesday (9 October) John Hutton, business and enterprise secretary, said it would be for a plant that uses post-combustion carbon capture technology.
Mr Hutton said the government would consider a phased approach to the project as long as the full carbon capture and storage process was demonstrated by 2014, and the project captured about 90 per cent of the CO2 emitted by the equivalent of 300 MW of generating capacity as soon as possible thereafter.
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